The Painted Veil
by pearypie
Summary: The entire tea set has been destroyed and all Elizabeth can think about is how difficult it will be to remove the stains from the dining room carpet. [future fic]


The sound of broken china crunched under the cream leather of her imported French heels. Elizabeth stood at the helm of the mess, a dusting of broken teacups and spilt strawberry jam with all the plates and pastries thrown onto the rich mulberry carpet. No amount of scrubbing would be able to take out the stains.

She says as much out loud.

"Is this really what you give primary importance to?" Ciel bites out, harsh and cold and unforgivingly sharp.

Tears sting at her eyes. "No." She straightens her pale blue tea dress. "No, of course not. I'll…I'll clean up." And she drops down onto the carpet, fingers trembling as she attempts to pick up the shattered pieces of hand-painted porcelain.

This was the set Ciel bought for her last year. On her 21st birthday.

"Elizabeth, for god's sake." Ciel steps away from the mahogany dining chair. His expression is tense and jaw clenched, as if fighting a battle between speech and thought. "Mey-Rin will tend to this just—Elizabeth. Elizabeth!" Ciel rushes forward, kneeling down in front of her as she began to cry, crystalline tears rolling down her cheeks.

"I'm sorry." She apologizes with agonizing humility. "I'm so sorry." Each proffered apology cuts through Ciel like a Reaper's death scythe.

He's made her cry.

Again.

"No, Elizabeth—this isn't your fault." Ciel sighs, pale hands coming to cup her rosy pink cheeks. He forces their eyes to meet, sapphire and tear stained emerald. "I should have never reacted so violently."

"But I knew you don't like to be asked about your work as the watchdog and I do it anyway. I'm so terribly careless and wretched and—"

"Don't say such things." Ciel reprimands sharply before he realizes what he's doing.

His hands fall away and a wave of helplessness washes over him, intermingling with long suppressed frustration and bitter longing. "None of this is your fault. I'm...not sure why this particular case weighs down on me so heavily." He gives a rueful smile. "Perhaps that there is the thesis of my agitation."

Elizabeth's gaze does not leave him and Ciel knows Leo Tolstoy wrote the truth when he described her as the sun—visible and present, even if one wasn't looking. What could he say to her? What words would reassure her that he felt nothing but the crushing weight of time and the desire to do something magnificent in her honor?

A strange heaviness settles around them, one bearing the weight of briar trees and pear blossoms and infinite possibility. His mouth opens and the words that come pouring forth have not been refined or restrained and he fears her reaction when he confesses that out of everyone in this world, she is the best of them all. The only one he wants to keep forever pure and forever good because she is the only woman who matters.

He must keep her protected, no matter the cost.

"Oh, but that's where your wrong." Lizzy lifts her golden head, curls loose and free flowing as she raises one hand to touch the sharp cut of his jaw. "I don't want you to keep me like that." Her voice is soft and full of wistful longing. "I don't want to be kept like some porcelain doll you can't speak to or think with. I don't want your burdens to be your own—I want you to share them with me. It doesn't have to be anything important, Ciel. I just—I only want you to confide in me. Tell me a little of your heart. I don't ask for all of it, truly."

Ciel's fingertips brushes the inside of her wrist and watches her eyes flutter shut. An overwhelming sense of guilt wells up inside him, one he can only attribute towards himself. "You would despise me."

"No." Lizzy shakes her head, mouth drawn and determined and—there!

This is the Elizabeth who guards his dreams, a valkyrie of Avalon, golden and sure. "I could never feel anything but love for you, Ciel." She moves closer to sit by him and, as if on instinct, Ciel shoves away the broken pieces of a Ming vase. "For years I've stood by you in the hopes of giving you comfort. If I can make you happy by keeping still and silent, I will. If I can make you happy by being loud and boisterous, I will. If I can make you happy by smiling and feigning blissful ignorance then, Ciel—I _will_. You only need to express the slightest note of satisfaction and I will gladly keep to those boundaries only please," Lizzy's forefinger touches the corner of Ciel's mouth, "please don't push me away."

"Lizzy—"

"I only want you to be happy, Ciel. Even for a little while."

"Happiness is a moment of fleeting desperation, Elizabeth. A moment where you are so blissfully sated you forget everything else and immerse yourself in an illusion that does not exist." He must remind himself of this even while his heart is thrumming like a goldfinch trapped in a gilded cage and his nerves are set on fire.

Lizzy touches the point of his chin. "Would it be so difficult to find happiness with me?" Her smile is broken but her eyes are sincere and suddenly, Ciel feels a thousand years old and filled with all the ignorance of Europe's defeated conquerers. "I don't ask you to love me, Ciel. I just want you to…to _smile_ with me."

And here, the dam breaks. With a sigh that speaks of poetry in motion, Ciel gathers Elizabeth, tear stained and lovely, into his arms and holds her there, in the midst of chaos and ruined prosperity. "Oh Elizabeth." He runs one hand through her golden curls. "I have always found it more difficult to say the things I mean than the things I don't." His lips, pale pink and soft, gently graze another lock of her hair. "I can't imagine why you love me. As a child, I was too caught up in my own grievances and narcissism to think of others. As an adult, I find myself much the same." He hears her laugh, a mournful, heartbroken sound. "Did you know when we married I spent the first six months looking for the first sign of impatience? You have always loved me well, Lizzy. Too well. I feared that if you lived with me, if you saw me as I am, the image you had of me would shatter and I couldn't live with the thought of receiving your love only as a favor or worse—a pittance."

Elizabeth sniffs softly, and presses herself closer, wanting to merge her soul with his in the hopes of understanding the depth of his sorrow. For Ciel, with his lithe fingers running through her silken curls, occasionally brushing against the nape of her neck, _this_ is enough. There is no need for the cosmos above or the world below because with Elizabeth, he is finally content in the contemplation of himself. The motion of the universe holds no weight over him and everything else is but rust and stardust.

After another moment of fragile silence, Lizzy shakes her head and her voice, muffled by the blue velvet of his jacket, reverberates through Ciel's body. "Foolishness." She murmurs, grasping onto his jacket lapel with all the strength and determination of love itself.

To Ciel's surprise, he doesn't mind it.

* * *

Sebastian had the entire dining room cleaned and gleaming by 4 o'clock that afternoon. At approximately half past seven, his master and mistress would take their supper together before the former went to his study and the latter went to her outdoor gardens. Yet this evening, Sebastian feels that their daily routine has been compromised when he hears laughter behind the rosewood doors of his master's private library.

"…Here are sweet peas, on tip-toe for a flight; with wings of gentle flush o'er delicate white." Lady Elizabeth's sweet soprano rings out, light and blithe as a summer's day.

Though it would be prudent to depart, he lingers for half a minute more and feels mild surprise when he hears another voice—low and regal—murmuring prose of a similar nature.

"And taper fingers catching at all things; to bind them all about with tiny rings."

"Are we bound together, Ciel?" Lady Elizabeth inquires, delicate as nursery tea and sweet as honey.

"I would be bound to no other but you." His young master counters, sure and swift as the Atlantic current.

And from behind their alcazar of wedded bliss, Sebastian smiles with thinly suppressed amusement before going on his way.

It would be best to deliver supper upstairs then.

* * *

 **\- "I have always found it more difficult to…" — lifted from W. Somerset Maugham's 1925 novel, _The Painted Veil_.**

 **\- "everything else is but rust and stardust." — from the pen of Vladimir Nabokov and his magnum opus, _Lolita_.**

 **\- "Here are sweet peas…" — comes from the John Keats poem _I stood tip-toe upon a little hill_.**

 **A/N: Welp. I wrote this after having watched The Painted Veil (starring Edward Norton and Naomi Watts) and after bawling my eyes out, I came up with this little fic. It was supposed to be a 500 word drabble but…I got carried away.**

 **Feedback would be lovely ^^**


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